


the road to salvation

by alaynes



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Attempt at Historical Accuracy, Crusades Era Joe | Yusuf al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, M/M, Multi, POV Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Period Typical Bigotry, Pre-Relationship, Religious Guilt, Temporary Character Death, Third Crusade, but no homophobia internalised or otherwise, no proodreading we die like people sick of staring at their own writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:33:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27096601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alaynes/pseuds/alaynes
Summary: In Byzantium, they hear about the impending reconquest of Jerusalem. It has been a hundred years, and yet Nicolò knows: Jerusalem will fall, and it will not go unanswered.Or: I heard something about canon saying Nicky fought in the later crusades and got upset and decided not like that he doesn't.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 51





	the road to salvation

**Author's Note:**

> The M rating is for violence, which doesn't exceed canon amounts or anything, but it's just some very ugly imagery. I've tried to be as cautious as I can, but I didn't want to underplay the things that happened in the Crusades. I hope nothing is too... much. The same goes for the Islamophobia found here, which I have really tried to keep as mild and inoffensive as possible while not like, whitewashing. The point is that it's bad, but I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings _today_. That said, I'm not a Christian or a Muslim or a historian, so if there's anything wrong in here, please let me know and I will do my best to fix it.
> 
> also: as far as I'm concerned, that art on Copley's wall from the sixth crusade was literally anybody but these two

one hundred fifty-six

They were in Saloníki, travelling through the Byzantine empire in the opposite direction of the Sicilian forces that were wreaking havoc on the Cephallenian islands. Byzantium had had a troublesome period of successive rulers who, perhaps, intended to right the wrongs of their predecessors, but in doing so only created new wrongs; in consequence, the four of them had spent the last few years in various cities in Byzantium, fighting each new set of enemies to protect whoever they _could_ protect, whoever needed protecting at the time. They had intended to leave within a few months initially—Andromache did not like to stay in a single place for long, he had learned; she had berated himself and Yusuf to no end when they first found each other because of their extended stay in At-Turab, even if it was that very stay that had led to their meeting—but each time they decided that they would soon leave, something worse had followed, be that the massacre of Constantinople, or, now, the Sicilian war.

Nicolò and Quỳnh were out together to retrieve food and some other supplies to their appropriated home when they heard the conversation. 

“We’re being pulled back.” It was two Sicilian soldiers who were standing guard at a great warehouse, but seemed to know that no one would attempt to go past them in broad daylight. None but Nicolò and Quỳnh, that was. “The commander said we would be leaving before the end of the month.” It was the taller of the two that spoke, with wavy brown hair that extended to his shoulders, worn loose. Quỳnh gestured to Nicolò to wait while she went around them for the gate on the left. He nodded once, watching the guards as she crept away far more silently than he was capable of doing.

The other, a short man with blond hair, seemed unsure. “Did we win?”

The first shrugged. “Doesn’t sound like it. We’re going back home, not on to Constantinople.”

The blond snorted. “We would’ve won if I was there.” Nicolò shook his head to himself, but he was glad for the man’s arrogance. It would make him easier to bring down. “So, what, we just leave? I hate ships. I had to sit on a damn ship for months just so we could go back home on a ship? With nothing to show for it?”

Long hair looked up suddenly, and Nicolò tensed, but he was only waving at an insect. “You’re telling me,” he said. “We all know we’re only here because he’s too scared to take Africa back. We should never have made peace with the Saracens, or run away. We could’ve fought and won.” Nicolò cocked his head. When he had last been there, Mahdia had been under Sicilian rule—a fact Yusuf had been unhappy about—but that had been years ago, and they had been occupied first in the north and then in Byzantium for too long to know everything that had happened since.

“I’d rather be there,” the blond said. “Fighting for the Holy Land. We wouldn’t have lost in Alessandria if I’d been there.”

Long hair shoved the blond. “You’d have to take a ship there, too.” 

Quỳnh appeared on the other side of the gate, and gestured for Nicolò to follow her count. He did, straightening and shifting his grip on his crossbow. When Quỳnh’s count reached one, he began to wind his crossbow. It made an awful noise on winding, which had been irritating, until Andromache suggested that it could be a tool rather than a source of trouble. Or, perhaps, that it should be a source of trouble used to their advantage.

Both the guards looked up at that, and approached together. Nicolò had done this a dozen times by now, and he took a few noisy steps backward, as though he was running, even if it meant he could no longer see the men. Sure enough, the guards followed in seconds. He shot the blond one as a distraction, and as he dodged, Quỳnh grabbed the long-haired one and knocked him out, as fast as that. At his shout, the blond looked behind, and Nicolò brought the flat of his sword down on his head in two non-lethal hits.

Quỳnh dropped the tall man to the ground with a huff. “You seem to have something on your mind,” she said, as he pulled his sword from the blond’s arm. Bone cracked as he pulled, and he grimaced.

“Something they were speaking of,” he said, and did not elaborate. Undoubtedly Quỳnh had heard most of what he had, if not all of it; she knew his and Yusuf’s origin, knew how they had met and how they had died. Which was to say that she knew of his greatest wrongdoing, the sin that, once he was truly finished believing in the righteousness of their pilgrimage—the word grated at him, now—beyond any denials he could pose, had convinced him was the reason God had kept him on earth still. 

She said nothing, for the moment, but he knew that they would have to bring it up eventually. If nothing else, he would tell Yusuf, who may want to know—and Andromache, of course. She liked to keep abreast of any news of the ongoings around them, so as best to protect those who needed protecting. 

So, as they sat for dinner, he brought it up first. “I heard something interesting today,” he said. “Two of the guards were talking. It seems the Sicilian army has been defeated; they are leaving soon.” They had expected, initially, for the occupation of Saloníki to last a longer time, as the Byzantine forces had been weakened by this period of strain. The city had fallen not three months prior. 

Andromache hummed. “Good. We have been here too long already.” 

Yusuf groaned. He was not fond of frequent movement—neither was Nicolò. “We cannot have been in the same city for longer than a year at a time, Andromache.” 

Andromache only shook her head at him. It was not a new argument; she insisted that they had survived these years by staying on the move, never in any place long enough to be recognised as not-aging. She opened her mouth to say this, but Nicolò beat her to it. “Yes, we know, you have lived for thousands of years in safety because you do not stay in one place to get comfortable and get killed.” She turned a glare to him, and Quỳnh laughed as he shrank back under the force of it, even if he knew it was not meant. “That is not all I heard.”

When they all—barring Quỳnh, who turned to look at Andromache—turned to look at him, waiting, he said: “The guards were speaking of a battle for the Holy Land.” He turned to Yusuf, who had tensed, his fist clenching around his knife. “It seems Sicilia has lost its hold on Mahdia and Tarabulus.” This was nothing particularly new, he supposed; there had been dozens of changes to the borders Nicolò had been familiar with when he lived, but these ones were significant to Yusuf, which made them feel more important. 

And, of course, there was the matter of Jerusalem. 

Andromache was the one to respond. “I heard something to that end myself. It seems the Sicilian soldiers are unhappy with the way things are turning for them. Some of them want to stay, keep Saloníki. I assume the men who fought the Byzantine army would like to leave. Guillelmo’s position does not sound enviable at this moment.”

“Serves him right,” Quỳnh said, prompting a dazzling grin from Andromache, and that was that for dinner. The oldest among them did not believe in sudden decisions. He supposed, with that kind of age, he might not either.

It was when they retired to their chambers—or what they had been using as chambers—that it was brought up again, this time by Yusuf. “You seemed tense at dinner,” he said, sitting back on the cot that passed for his bed. “Was it the news of al-Quds?”

Nicolò nodded. “If—I don’t know who it is that intends to reclaim the city, but I don’t believe it will go unanswered. Not now.”

The letters from the perpetrators of the sack of Jerusalem had spread shortly after those days of cruelty, alongside accounts of victims and witnesses alike. Thousands of new-made knights returned to their homelands, for they had never meant to stay, and they had taken with them stories of the things done there. They had taken Jerusalem in July; by the end of the Christian year, there had been no man, woman, or child in the kingdoms and empires around the Roman Sea who had not heard of the atrocities perpetrated there. And how could it be otherwise? Nicolò had stood on the blood-washed streets of the city, seen the deaths of thousands in a way he could not have even imagined before then. 

Depending on where they went, in the first few years following the sack, when it was fresh in people’s memories, they had heard a hundred different opinions. It was good. It was bad. It was good, if cruel. It was bad because it was cruel. It was _good_ because it was cruel. It was no better or worse than any other city captured in this troubled land. It was an act of jealousy. It was an act of bloodlust. It was purely politics. It was a reclaiming of God’s land. It was the work of the Devil. It was right. It was wrong. It was done in the name of God. It was a miraculous victory, it was the very _work_ of God. 

How could that be so? How could any that had seen the horrors of that day, the ones that had woken both him and Yusuf in the night for several years afterward, despite all the death they had seen in the time since, say that this was the work of God?

He did not know the intention of those who wished to take the city back, if it was for the political reasons that he had not known then motivated their journey to begin with, or if it was because of the importance of the city to the followers of Mohamed, or for some other, new reason that he could not see. What he knew was that, were the city to be lost, its loss would sting every man, king, or emperor in Christendom, far greater than the loss of Edessa had forty years ago. And he did not wish to imagine what would follow then, in this world that so lauded the acts of cruelty done there on that day.

“You think this will be worse than that was,” Yusuf said, understanding immediately. He nodded, throat tight. “We have seen worse things, Nicolò. So has the city. It will survive, as we have.”

He did not know who the _we_ Yusuf meant was, if it meant him and Yusuf, as immortals, or the city, or his people. Nicolò looked away. “As you say,” he said, and laid down to sleep.

one

The Holy City was not what he had expected, on the inside. Or perhaps, that was not correct. The _city_ itself was just as he had imagined, perhaps greater. There had been no words for the chill of awareness that had gone through him when they had gone from one step to the next, and in the distance its walls and towers had come into view. He had felt it, not only in himself, but in all those around him. Between those two steps, men had fallen to their knees, had teared up, had felt it return—all that they had believed lost from them in the past three years of hardship and suffering. Or that was how it had been for Nicolò. The siege before this city felt a fraction of its length, far shorter than the same first weeks before Antioch had felt. This was Jerusalem, the aim of all their efforts of the last years, the home of Christ’s greatest suffering (and his resurrection). 

But within. 

His boots squelched wetly with every step he took. The streets were littered with bodies, some of his co-pilgrims, but most of those that had lived here. Women and children had, evidently, not been spared. Nicolò seemed to have missed the majority of the bloodshed in lying without; instead, he had the questionable opportunity to see the aftermath. Or, no, that was wrong too. Two men ran past him, tunics dyed red in a way madder would never achieve. Howls of laughter followed them. If they saw him, they gave no sign of it. He took a deep breath and moved to see where they had emerged from, and found, inside, the clearly terrified features of three old, dead men.

Why had he been stopped beyond the gates? He should have come in, he could have—or maybe he—he didn’t know it would look like—

 _What would you have done?_ some cruel whispered voice said to him, some voice that he had thought would leave when his eyes had landed on the Holy City. _Would you have stopped it?_ Would he? What could he have done, one man against the thousands that had come here, that had apparently come here thirsty for blood? 

His boot landed on something soft; too soft to be ground. He jerked back, swearing furiously to himself. This was not what the Holy City was meant to be. It was not—it was not—

Another three men flew past the next street, and this time, one stopped to look at him. A familiar face, he realised after a moment. Giannis, he remembered after a moment; he was from Firenze, not so far from Nicolò’s own home, and their languages were similar enough that they had spent some time together around the same firepit. “Nicolò, is that you?” he called out now, and Nicolò nodded, too afraid to open his mouth in case he vomited. “We are going to the temple!” he said. Nicolò nodded once again, but he did not know what that meant. Perhaps there would be a priest to celebrate Mass, to give communion. But he could not imagine partaking in the Holy Communion here, not covered in blood as he was. Could anyone? 

His legs took him in the direction that the men had gone, but it was not long before he realised what they meant by the temple. It was not a church, as he had assumed, but a place of worship for the Saracen’s false God. Blood and bodies surrounded it, as everything else. 

Nicolò turned abruptly and left to run down a street where no one would see him, and then he was on his knees, heaving, with nothing in his stomach to leave it. 

This was not—

The people that followed Raimond of Tolosa all the way to Genoa had said, passing along the message of the Pope, that Jerusalem was a city akin to Paradise. That those that journeyed here would be freed from the ills and lacks of their poorer lands, and be taken to a land of plenty, and in their doing this holy task of restoring the Sepulchre to its rightful place, in restoring Christianity to this Holy City, they would be delivered from all other sins. He had not dwelt on that, not for long, as much as he was able.

He pressed a hand to his flesh, to where a wound ought to be. Perhaps he had not been good enough to live to see it.

When he turned around, the man he had killed was locked in battle against two men, blood covering the front of his dress. 

zero

The Turkic mountains had shown them threats that Nicolò would never have anticipated when they had been travelling through Christian lands. 

They had left with Raimond of Tolosa, and their journey had taken them past the mountains, through Venezia, and south through the Kingdom of Hungary, until they had reached Byzantium. There, they had been joined by the men led by Pierre, who had left earlier than the command of the Pope, and who had been caught in the mountains by Turks. Nicolò had heard, as the word had spread through their camps and train, that there had been great carnage in the mountains when they had attempted to cross, and of the many thousands who had left with Pierre, less than three had returned to Constantinople. 

This had not been frightening for long, as the second train was better-led, by all accounts. They had heard stories as they passed through Hungary of the crimes committed by these men, which had followed with talks of the importance of good leadership. Their purpose was to relieve the Holy City from infidel Saracens, after all, and not to rob their own Christian neighbours, nor loot their towns and cities. His friend, a Provençal called Colinus, countered to say that the men that had followed Pierre were poor, and had not been supplied as their own trains had with the wealth of lords and knights.

Colinus was not a city-dweller; he had been a peasant, tending to farms of a petty lord in Provençe called Tibaut, whose name Colinus never said without spitting. He had left when Raimond’s train had passed through his region, though, he said, he had been waiting for it since he heard the Pope’s call. “I would have taken up with Pierre’s men had they passed through at the right time.” The _right time_ , as he called it, was the death of his youngest daughter, Hadvisa. “Haddy was ill, I couldn’t leave.”

Nicolò never knew what to say to that; he had not known much grief, and certainly not that of the loss of his own children. Sicre, a handsome Frankish knight who was half a head taller than Nicolò and built like an ox, but spoke with the soft tone of someone who considered everything slowly and carefully, said, “That too was part of God’s plan. Had you left then, you might not have been sitting here today.”

Colinus gave a small uncertain smile of response, but Nicolò smiled at Sicres, grateful that he had said something. 

But as their own time came to cross through the mountains, it began to look as though they, too, would not make it through these mountains. The Turk attacks were brutal, and they were organised and trained warriors, where most of their men were peasants still. The morning that they heard of Boemondo’s vanguard being attacked, Raimond had announced that they must reinforce them, and make certain that this great part of their train was not lost to these attacks. But—not with all of their men. Only those already skilled, primarily composed of the knights in the party—but their knights were fewer than those of other trains, and so others were to go also. 

Nicolò was among those selected for his existing familiarity with a sword, something that not many amongst them could say, and he marched out of their camp with grim features, for _he_ knew how little skill he had as a warrior. Sicres joined him halfway through the day, before they had met the first Turks yet, and said, “Why do you look so grim?”

“I am not a warrior. If you did not know—I was in training to become a priest.” His experience with a sword was from _before_ then, from when he had been the third son of a third son of a knight. Whatever practice they had done on their journey would amount to little against those of skill. “I am afraid,” he admitted.

Sicre said, “You are on God’s mission. Why should you be afraid, when He is with you?”

It had almost worked. They had had to fight through several smaller parties of Turks on horseback, and although they had the larger numbers, their opponents were skilled, and had the advantage of knowing the mountains far better than themselves. But they were not impossible to defeat, and their numbers prevailed time and time again, and halfway through the day Nicolò was beginning to feel hopeful that they would, if nothing else, reach Boemondo’s train and prevent them being destroyed the way Pierre’s following had. 

They were the last to arrive. The mounting losses seemed to have dulled, and Nicolò had known from the way their formidable enemy’s strength was flagging that they must have been at battle for many hours. Their first attack was enough to scatter their exhausted forces, but they had all known that it was not over yet, for they must pass their camp if they were to leave these mountains and reach the Holy City. 

What followed seemed twice as long as all the efforts of the day earlier, but when they were finished, Nicolò was largely unhurt, barring bruises and nicks and scrapes by arrows that had _nearly_ missed him. He was not a knight, and as such had no armour to protect him from the arrows of their enemies, but he learned to use his borrowed shield to deflect arrows that he could see coming, and although it hurt his arm, it protected his vital organs. The most terrifying time of the day was when one arrow blew past his ear in a terrifying sound that he would never forget—but embedded itself in the flank of a horse of one of their enemies, and Nicolò thought of Sicre’s words and knew then that he was right. Their final rally was punctuated with a cry of promised riches if they had God’s favour, and it was true, and although those riches were only a temporary satisfaction, Nicolò understood that they were a prize for their efforts. 

Sicre had met him, as marched past the reduced enemy camp to rejoin with those men they had left behind. “You see?” he said, smiling at Nicolò in a way that tempted him in a way that jewels and gold never would. “You have nothing to fear.”

But even before they arrived at Antioch, Sicre was dead.

eighty-two

They remained in Byzantium past the end of the year, which was more than they could say for the Sicilian soldiers. They had intended to leave, but no question of danger to themselves and their secret could have torn Andromache—or any of the rest of them—away once they saw what the winter would bring for these people whose supplies had been taken and ships had been burned by the retreating Sicilian force. They were warriors, Andromache said, and yet it was not only in battle that they remained to help the people of Saloníki. 

When the weather turned, however, they took to the closest trade port, and from there found themselves on a ship to al-Iskandariya. 

In the first years after their death, Nicolò and Yusuf had found themselves aboard several ships. This had been for two reasons; the first and most immediate was that there had been a steady crawl of both refugees (who knew Yusuf) and men of the Cross (who knew Nicolò) leaving Jerusalem, and each encounter, no matter how distant the knowledge of these men, left those they met with questions. To Yusuf: is this not a Frank with whom you travel? To Nicolò: what are you doing with this Saracen? They had found clothing for themselves that did not give away their origins nor their presence at the battle freely, but there was nothing to be done about their appearances. 

Those were the years the two of them had seen the most of their deaths, even compared to the near-hundred that followed.

The other reason had been that walking was an ineffective mode of travel when one wished to move from city to city. In the cities, they had reasoned, they would find safety in crowds, in numbers. Al-Iskandariya had been their first aim; it was familiar to Yusuf, whose travels had taken him through the city often, and its port was active enough that many similar in appearance to Nicolò were to be found. And so they had made their way, somehow, to Azdud, and boarded a ship. Aboard the ship had been the first time in weeks that Nicolò had been able to sleep in any real or restful way, and, he had the feeling, so it had been for Yusuf.

He reclined on his back now, staring up at the stars. His duties onboard the ship were those that could be completed in daytime; nights he had the freedom to do as he willed. That was to say, to do little of anything. Yusuf and Quỳnh had befriended some of the sailors, and Andromache seemed immediately to trust anyone that Quỳnh trusted, and so they at times sat together with those sailors, speaking of things, sometimes in languages that Nicolò had not yet learned, but would likely learn in the years he had ahead. That was not to say that he had no tongues in common with the men aboard the ship; he did, but company was not for him often these days. He found himself retreating away to his own mind even when in company, and in turn the others had fit to leave him alone to it.

The others, apart from Yusuf, that was. 

He appeared in Nicolò’s line of sight first, a question in his smile and the raise of his eyebrow. “What are you doing?” he asked in Arabi.

Nicolò gestured upwards to the heavens, and Yusuf followed his gaze. “Watching the stars," he said. “Imagining I can trace our route in them.”

Yusuf laughed and sat down next to him, leaning backward on his hands and staring upwards. Nicolò resolutely did not look at the line of his neck, before turning back to the sky abruptly as Yusuf turned to him, pointing. “There is Al-Judeyy. Do you remember?”

Nicolò could not help it, he had to laugh. “I could barely understand what you were saying.” Nicolò had had to trust Yusuf’s navigation, which would likely have gone a little better if they knew each other’s languages. As was, he had had no idea he was pointing to the ship-star. Yusuf laughed with him, something quieter and warmer than his great booming laugh. Nicolò chanced another glance at him, but he was looking back, and it was so bright he had to look away.

Yusuf said, after a few moments, “You have been very quiet for the last few days. Since we left.”

“I am thinking,” Nicolò said. 

“You are always thinking.” Yusuf sighed, then nudged him with his knee. “I know what this is about, but I do not know _what_ you are thinking. It is worrying, Nicolò. You have not been this way in a long time.”

That was true. It had taken years for Nicolò to stop thinking of the sack, of his part in it, of all the things he had turned a blind eye to, if not participated in. Eventually, however, he had stopped. His and Yusuf’s truce in the face of a joint inability to die had transformed into a true friendship. Their trust had grown from the bare thing it had been in the beginning, to one that surpassed _life_ , and went to the intimacy between friends and brothers. Their lives were isolated and quiet in this loud world, and while there was no denying that things were changing all around them, those things had faded from his thoughts after a time, particularly after they met Andromache and Quỳnh, with so much of his time devoted to the cares of others. He preferred it that way, in truth. “I know,” he admitted quietly. “But that does not mean they do not weigh on me. This has not come up in a long time.”

“Nicolò...” Yusuf began, and stopped speaking when one of the oarsmen, a young Venetian called Raniero, stopped before them, a great grin on his face.

“Nicolò! You are here! We are opening a new cask of wine in the decks. You should come with us. Yusuf, I would invite you as well, but...” He made an apologetic face, but Yusuf shook his head, amusement flickering in the corners of his mouth. He did not abstain these days, but he did not often care to explain that. Raniero turned back to him, eagerness written on his features.

“Perhaps another day,” he said. “For now, Andromache may make you better company, though I would advise against competing with her.”

Raniero’s grin did not falter. “Another time, then! I shall hold you to that, Nicolò!” He nodded to Yusuf, and left, only shooting a single glance backwards, perhaps to make sure that Nicolò had not changed his mind. 

Yusuf was shaking his head. “That boy is completely taken with you.”

Nicolò shrugged. “I know.” He looked back at Yusuf, raising an eyebrow. “Do not worry, I have no intention of giving us away in the throes of foolish, temporary love.”

Yusuf groaned. “That was not what I said. I certainly did not say anything of that sort.” That was exactly what he had said. Nicolò remembered, because it had left him so confused and irritated he had nearly bedded the man that warning had been about, only to prove that he would do nothing of the sort in the _throes of foolish love_. He hadn’t, of course. “However,” Yusuf said after a moment, “if his attraction is returned, do not let my words of warning stop you.”

Nicolò retorted, “I would not have let them stop me then.” Yusuf laughed, but Nicolò shook his head. “Not that it matters.”

“He is an attractive man, and known for his strength and skill as an oarsman,” Yusuf said. Nicolò raised a brow, and Yusuf shrugged. He supposed Ramiero could be considered somewhat attractive, with dark eyes and a strong jaw and nose, set against brown hair as long as Nicolò’s own, but he did not feel interest, not as he had with whoever-from-the-other-ship. 

“He is so young,” Nicolò said in the end. 

Yusuf sobered at that. “They all are. It feels odd, looking at even a man with grey in his hair and beard and wrinkles covering his bones, and think that he is _young_. I do not feel old, but—”

“But not so young as them.” Yusuf nodded, wiping a hand over his face, his newly trimmed beard. In Saloníki, he had worn his beard longer, saying that it made his face feel warmer, but he had worn it in the style popular in Byzantium, and shorn it short the day he had boarded the ship. “Do you remember al-Iskandariya?” he asked, “The first time?” Yusuf turned to look at him, nodded once. “Do you remember how it was to find a ship that would take us anywhere, in Azdud? Everyone on that vessel was suspicious of us, simply for traveling together, even though I pretended to be a Greek merchant. And then we arrived in the city, and every ship that made port was treated with fear and suspicion, until those few seeking refuge would emerge, and people would cry with joy and sorrow.” Yusuf said nothing, but his eyes had turned sad even without moving, and there was no doubt that he remembered. 

Nicolò said, “ _That_ is what I am thinking of.”

two

Nicolò awoke in a house that smelled of death.

The second battle between them had put the Saracen at a disadvantage, but not the disadvantage that it should have been. He did not move as if he was injured, though Nicolò distinctly remembered the slowing in his step and the sickening friction of the sword in his hand as it met flesh and bone. And yet, there the man stood, fighting two others—and winning—with as little injury as Nicolò himself. Had there been a mistake? 

By the time Nicolò reached them, the first of the two men was down, clutching at his leg and crying out. The second, an old man with a beard that was tucked into his belt, was shouting in some language Nicolò did not recognise. As he saw him, the Saracen seemed to startle as well, shouting out grotesquely and turning his blade to face him. 

They had been evenly matched the first time, and they were the second as well. The old man had attempted, several times, to interrupt while the Saracen swore and grunted and shouted in his tongue even as they fought, focus entirely on killing Nicolò, but for all that he had received a boot to his chest, and banged his head against the wall. The sight made Nicolò swear himself—but he could not say if it was the bloody prints on the wall that made him swear, or the image of the old man fallen by it.

He, for his own part, did not understand. Even if he had missed, or the man’s ribs had protected the vulnerable organs within, it was impossible for him to be as strong as he was. As impossible as it had been for himself. Was he a devil, then, who could revive his mortal flesh? But there was nothing to mark him as such, and the blood that coloured his clothing was red as men’s was. But if he _was_ a man—why would this unbeliever have been revived, even in the site of Christ’s resurrection, as he himself had? 

Nicolò’s hand flew to his throat as he remembered the slice that had been laid across it—and found that it had been closed so cleanly that it was as though he had not been hurt at all. But that could not be so. His breath grew quick and shallow with the memory of that suffocation, unlike any he had felt before. He was alive. He was _alive_. Again. 

He should not be. 

He pushed himself to his feet, and saw there on the ground, the man, lying dead once again. He stopped. 

Could he be correct? 

Outside, a shriek. Nicolò jumped, his heart startling so strongly there could be no doubt about its function. And— _No._ He could not be correct, for if he was, for if God was with him and reviving him, then this must be right. And this could not be, not the way blood filled the streets, not the way bodies filled every house and home. This could not be God’s work. 

So why was he alive?

He rushed out of the house and back up the street, pausing when a great party of men came in his way. He stopped, his breath coming slow and heavy, as they looked at him. Was it gore that kept their faces hidden and stopped him from knowing who these men were, or was it the way his vision shook at the edges, moved by the stench of death all around him? 

One stepped out of the crowd, grinning, and his lips were red with blood. “Colinus,” Nicolò said, breath finally calming. This was his friend, his first friend since he left Genoa, and they had agreed on everything they spoke of in these years so far. He would agree now, too. 

“Nicolò, my friend,” his tone was warm. “I have not seen you for hours. I was worried you had... but I see I had no reason to worry.” Colinus looked down at his tunic, and from behind a great whistle sounded. _Oh_ , he realised. They thought it was the blood of others. Nicolò shook his head, palming at the cracking cloth of his tunic. 

“No, this is—this is—” he broke off. What would he say, that it was his? They would think him mad, or worse. 

“Come with us,” Colinus said suddenly. “We are going to the district of the rich traders, where we have been promised a feast.”

 _A feast?_ The very thought of food made Nicolò’s stomach give a heave. “Surely you cannot eat, surrounded by this—” He looked around, and Colinus nodded, his features pulling into disgust. His shoulders dropped, relief flooding him, his friend agreed, surely others would as well—this may be the work of a few, an angry, cruel few, those that they had always disagreed with—this was not—

Colinus said, “I know, but the knights say they’ve decided to burn the bodies in a day or two. Not yet.”

His breath stopped. “What do you—what do you mean? _Burn the_ —Colinus, surely you cannot agree with—”

“What’s wrong, Nicolò?” his friend, who had always agreed with him on all things, asked him. Nicolò shook his head, backing away. “Come with us,” he called, “where are you going? Nicolò?”

eleven

Trust was the first good thing to form between them.

It happened like this: they were arguing, or whatever he could call arguing when neither of them spoke the other’s language, which he supposed to others might look simply like two men shouting at each other words they did not understand. The argument was—Nicolò _thought_ —about stopping to rest at a small watering hole they had found. The wells around Jerusalem were tainted and poisoned, Nicolò remembered far too well. But they were far enough away that the mountains had turned to blue lines in the distance, and the watering hole was not a well but a small lake of collected streamwater. They made significant distance each day, as much as they could manage, but the coast was yet a distant thought, which meant they would not reach Azdud—if he was correct and that was the place Yusuf wanted them to go; his assumption came from a conversation that he could boil down to only the few words he had understood: water-horse, danger, no, and al-Iskandariya—for days still. Nicolò did not want to know if he would survive death by dehydration, nor how it would feel. 

“We need to stop and rest,” Nicolò was saying, but he had a feeling Yusuf had understood as much of that as Nicolò understood of _his_ words. All the same, he could not stop speaking. If he stopped, perhaps they could come to an understanding, explain to each other the words they were using through gestures and direction, as they had previously. He did not stop. 

He did not want to stop. He wanted to speak and be understood, to rest his legs for a few minutes, to never worry about poisoned wells, to close his eyes and not open them again. “If there is water here, there may be something to eat. We need food as much as living men.” 

Yusuf responded in Arabi. 

It was between words that the men emerged, turning past trees with a laden donkey between them and swords on both of their hips. They did not resemble Yusuf particularly, but they resembled him more than they did Nicolò, and were dressed in the fashion of the Turks he had fought in Antioch and earlier, in the mountains. They were thin, though, and weak, and had no horses nor arrows as their mountainous brothers had held. 

Yusuf stepped forward to take the lead immediately. Nicolò did not step back and behind Yusuf—but as Yusuf began to speak, fear began to grapple with guilt. The men greeted him, and he greeted them in turn, sounding perfectly pleasant... but Nicolò did not know these words, did not know if Yusuf was telling them that he was an invader and murderer of their men, if any moment now all three of them would turn their swords upon him, and this time the death would keep. Even if it did not—they could as easily steal the (stolen) clothes from his back along with the meager supplies he carried. His sword may fetch a price, or be a weapon if one of theirs was lost. They could so easily leave him with no knowledge of this place’s language, no clothes, no food, no weapon, and no way to get to a near city or town but his own weary feet. It would not surprise Nicolò.

“I am Yusuf,” Nicolò recognised, _ana Yusuf_ , and then, between longer words, “Nikola.” Was that him? 

One of the men, whose mouth gaped where at least one front tooth had been knocked out, ran his hands over the side of the sword, while the other kept his eyes on Nicolò as though he would run, or perhaps attack them, at any moment.

Yusuf said _fight_ , and Nicolò’s hand tightened on his sword hilt, tension taking hold of his chest. It would not surprise him at all. After all, barring this new commonality they had found, there was nothing that should compel Yusuf to stay by his side, not having done what he had. He could easily leave him to be the problem of the next set of people to wander past, who too would wish to see him dead. Nicolò had come alive repeatedly, perhaps, but he did not know how long that would last, if leaving the vicinity of the Holy City would end it, or if he would meet his end only when he had suffered in full for his sins. If he would not cease to live at all, and discover that he was in Hell, and this was the form his suffering had taken. He also did not know if he would have the strength to fight any that came to kill him without food or weapon.

But the men only nodded, skepticism on their faces, and left. They were thin, and likely weak, weaker than he was. They must not wish to fight. Yusuf turned to him, and said some words that he did not understand. Slowly, his grip on his sword loosened, and they sat down to drink. 

Nicolò said nothing that day, nor the next, nor the next. He said it when they were in Azdud, which had come under the new-formed Lordship of Ramla. A Norman bishop that Nicolò knew by name as one of the men that had come with them—he had preached in both Latin and Frankish to those who could understand the language—had been given the bishopric, and armed Frankish guards stood at important places in the city. Yusuf had evidently not known that Azdud had fallen, but a hushed half-conversation beyond the walls had decided that they dared not risk walking to Ascalon, which may have fallen as well. He said it in this city that had been taken with no loss of life, but whose inhabitants glanced nervously from stone-faced guard to stone-faced guard as they lived their daily lives, unable to stop. 

“You could kill me,” he said. Yusuf looked surprised— _kill_ , he knew—the grief in his eyes as he looked around dimming for a moment. “All these people would not stop you. Nor the people before.” He gestured as he spoke, though it was impossible to tell how much Yusuf understood or did not. From the look in his eyes, it seemed to be more rather than less.

He said, “You - kill me. You - haven’t.”

Yusuf’s eyes were sure and dark, and though he could not possibly trust Nicolò, he had chosen to. Nicolò nodded, understanding—and when, the night before their ship was to board, they were accosted by four locals who were unhappy with Nicolò’s resemblance to the guards holding their city, he knew that Yusuf would be there when he awoke. 

one hundred sixty-two

In al-Iskandariya they heard that the Sultan of Ægypt had settled a peace treaty with the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which would cease the sieging of the caravans going on Hajj. 

Quỳnh told him this when she and Andromache returned from their information-scouting mission. Yusuf had left for the masjid early in the morning, and, knowing how long it had been since he had had the opportunity, Nicolò had not asked to join him in the city. He had decided not to leave their rooms, which had been rented to them by an older woman who somehow knew his sisters, and had not asked them anything except for whether they needed hot water. Andromache had refused to answer and questions about it, but Quỳnh had winked at them in a way that said she would tell them later. The wink, of course, gave away _precisely_ how they knew the woman.

“Tell us the rest when Yusuf returns,” Nicolò said as Quỳnh began to elaborate. “He will want to hear this.”

“Will want to hear what?”

Nicolò stopped midword, mouth partway open. Yusuf had clearly visited the hammam, and had purchased a rich green cloth that was wrapped around his neck and shoulders in the styles of here. After these months dressed in the manner of the Byzantine, Yusuf seemed almost to be brought alive again, near glowing in the sunny afternoon. To be wearing the clothing of his own men suited his preferences, Nicolò knew, and it reflected on his features.

Quỳnh began to laugh, and Nicolò turned abruptly away and stuffed a piece of meat in his mouth, almost stabbing himself as he did. Quỳnh laughed harder. 

Andromache said, “Salah ad-Din has signed a peace treaty with the King of Jerusalem. There will be no attempt, not at this time, for its recapture.” 

Yusuf’s gaze hardened, and he came to sit next to Nicolò, one hand dropping to brush against his chair, for just one moment against the low of his back. “I heard that he defeated the Franks several times, and has taken much of their land from them. And from the old Kings of Ægypt as well. This is Turk land we stand in now, it seems.” 

Andromache nodded. “What I understand is that Salah ad-Din has united the land from Ægypt to Halab under one rule. He has surrounded the Kingdom of Jerusalem entirely. I’m uncertain of why he has negotiated this peace. The opinion of people seems split, but more seem to be leaning towards attack, now.”

Yusuf nodded. “The Imam was speaking of this, if not directly.” 

That would leave an impact. It had been the same, at home, a hundred years ago—and undoubtedly it had been the same forty years ago as well, when Edessa had been captured, and would be the same in future, if—or perhaps when—this Salah ad-Din took Jerusalem. Quỳnh said, “Let us give it a few months and see what comes of it. If they move, we are here. If they do not...” she trailed off. Yusuf nodded, but behind Nicolò’s back, he could feel the brush of twitching fingers.

Andromache and Quỳnh disappeared not too long afterwards to speak to the older woman in her bedroom, Quỳnh shooting Nicolò some pointed looks that he ignored. Yusuf, it seemed, did not have very much to say either; they sat in near-silence, punctuated only by noises of chewing, until a sudden shriek of laughter from within the old woman’s room made them both jump. 

It was followed by the sound of quiet moaning, and Yusuf shook his head. “Trust the two of them...” he laughed, looking at Nicolò properly for the first time since Andromache had told him of the peace. “Do you remember the first time they did that?”

Nicolò groaned. He did—far too well. It had been just days after they had finally, _finally_ found them, after all those years of dreaming and searching and finally waiting. It had been obvious from the first hour of meeting that Andromache and Quỳnh were lovers, but he had still been surprised at the loud and vocal moans that had emerged from their room one night, right as the two of them had been falling asleep. “I couldn’t sleep all night.” 

“Your ears had turned as red as your clothes. I thought perhaps you had lied about your time with men.” Nicolò huffed. He had not _lied_ , but they had always been very—quiet, buried in secrecy as they were. Careful, discreet. Not like Andromache and Quỳnh liked to be.

“Do you remember what Andromache said, when you nearly fell off your horse that time?”

Yusuf made a face. “If you truly cannot sleep for your sensitive ears, just ask Nicolò to kill you,” he said, voice a near-perfect imitation for Andromache’s tone. 

From within, the woman herself bellowed, “We can hear you!” Of course they could. The walls were very, very thin.

“So can we!” Yusuf shouted back, before staring at Nicolò. He could not help but laugh with him as Quỳnh retorted in rapid-fire Viet, until it seemed all three women dissolved into laughter as well. Even as their laughter faded, it was replaced by a soft smile that reached his eyes. He turned so he was leaning on his knee and facing Nicolò, rather than leaning on the wall and facing away. “Hello,” he greeted.

“Hello,” he returned. “Did you have a pleasant day?”

“It was very relaxing. It is a shame you did not wish to come with me.” Nicolò had assumed that Yusuf would prefer to be on his own. He said nothing to that, only smiling as he could not help but do. “There was an Al-Kaysani trader, do you know. Wahid ibn Taufiq ibn Faizullah Al-Kaysani. I am not even sure who Faizullah is.” He paused, and then said, sadly, “He was a very poor salesman.”

 _Ah_. “But you still bought from him.”

Yusuf winked. “If I do not patronise our own cloth, who will? I would have bought something for you as well—and our sisters—but we have very high rates. He would not offer me a discount. Perhaps I should not have bought from him. He will have to learn, and not all customers are generous and nostalgic distant relations.”

“Do you—” he began, and then hesitated. Yusuf’s eyes questioned, and he looked so open and true that it hurt in Nicolò’s heart. “Do you wish it was you?” Yusuf raised an eyebrow, as though to say, _that could not be me_ , but it was not a question of time, nor years. “Do you wish this Wahid was your son, your grandson, perhaps your great-grandson?”

Yusuf said, tone mild, “No great-grandson of mine would be such a poor salesman.” Nicolò looked away. There was a sigh from beside him, one that spoke of a great weariness, and the ache in his heart grew. “Nicolò,” he said, just as gently, “that could not have been my grandson nor great-grandson, you know it as well as I. My duty could not have kept me from protecting al-Quds no more than yours would have allowed you to leave. If not you, then some other Frank would have killed me, and I would be just here, but poorer.”

Nicolò looked up at him. He did not know how Yusuf could be gentle with him; had not understood it when their friendship was forming, had not understood it the first time that he had sensed eyes on him with something he was too afraid to name, to let himself wish for. “Even then, I am sorry,” he said, but the words did not erase the hurt swimming in Yusuf’s eyes, as they never had.

“I care for you deeply, habibi,” Yusuf said, and brought two hands up to catch his cheeks when Nicolò began to turn away. His palms were, as ever, warm. “You know me as no other does, and it is true that if not for you, I may well have been driven mad in those early days when we knew less than we do now. But it is just as true that I cannot offer you the forgiveness that you seek.” He opened his mouth to attempt a response, but Yusuf shook his head and continued, “I can no longer begrudge you for killing me then, for you have saved me countless times since, and even knowing that I cannot die you have taken wounds for me. And I cannot forgive you for what you did at al-Quds, for I remain alive and as I was, while those that died are gone forever, and that is not my crime to pardon.” He let go of Nicolò’s face, and said, “I am not the one whose forgiveness you seek, Nicolò. If that is all you wish from me, you will never have it.”

He could hear the rest as clearly as if he had spoken the words, but he could not respond to it. Not when—

Yusuf stood after a moment, and left for the room they had been given. Nicolò stared at the spot he had been, felt the warmth of his palms on his own cheeks, and wished.

zero

The cold always felt worse when he was hungry.

This must be true for all of them, no doubt; sitting here beyond the mocking walls of a city that was merely an obstacle on the pilgrim’s path to the Holy City, shivering in their thin worn blankets and clutching at the bones that had begun to show through the bodies of even the strongest of men. And yet, on days that he allowed himself self-pity, Nicolò liked to believe that he was worse accustomed to starvation than many of his companions, having lived in a house with little lack, and then in the priory, where there had always been—enough, if barely. But he had no way to measure its truth, and so on these days Nicolò simply accepted for himself that he felt his hunger more acutely than those who had lived with it in their lives before.

Colinus seemed to be feeling it far less. He sat next to Nicolò, warming his hands over the fire, lost in reminiscence of his children. “Haddy sounded like you when she was hungry,” he said. That was his youngest daughter, Hadvisa, who had been, from what Nicolò gathered, Colinus’ favourite of his four daughters, closest to him in heart. “Tina would cry and cry and cry, and Juli would scream at everyone around her, but Haddy, no, Haddy would just pull her little legs up to her stomach and sit there, staring at everything as though the walls were bread.”

“It’s not the hunger so much as the cold,” he replied. It should not be so different from home—no, it should be warmer, given the hellish heat of this land in summer months, but this siege had shown him otherwise. “The fire seems ready to burn us alive before it warms.” In the first winter months of their journey, Nicolò had likened sitting before their fire pits to sitting by a fireplace at home, him and his brothers and sometimes his parents, talking or sometimes singing or playing. But then, people had been more enthused to do all of those things before they reached Byzantium, when their neighbours had been Christians and food and supplies had not been so scarce. Before the Turks had taken a third of their numbers, and summer and starvation and now winter another third. 

“That’s due to the infidels,” Berran, another Norman who spoke a language near enough to Languedoc and Zeneise for them to understand, said. “They’ve turned this land to a dead waste. Nothing could live for long where godless men be.” Some of the men shook their heads, but said nothing, like as not too hungry to speak much. Or perhaps they, like Nicolò, could not agree with that. Privately, he thought, that if the land had turned to a waste as its own form of revolt to the Saracen occupation, it should not be so inhospitable to Christian pilgrims, who had come to relieve it.

And, of course, there was the matter that they had been sieging before Antioch for near on eight months now. Had they been in a land of plenty, with fruitful trees all around them and green bushes and grasses for game to follow, then, too, would their caravan of thousands have stripped those trees bare of fruit and made meals of all the animals in that time. They would have feasted in summer and slowed in autumn, but when winter came, they would have been here again, shivering by their fires as the cold pierced their bones.

Nicolò did not say this, as he did not wish to provoke Berran—yet again. Anger seemed to sit on the tip of their nose these days, all of them, and they could ill-afford to be fighting within themselves, reduced as their numbers were. 

Most of those Nicolò had met in the early months of their journey were dead now. Many more had seen fit to leave before they met their own ends. There were moments when Nicolò wished he had the cowardice to do as they had, to leave the camp in the dead of night, to find a friendly port and make his way back home, to accept the scorn and shame that would come with his return—but to _live_ , to eat, to be warm, to speak to his mother or brothers, to meet his nieces and nephews, to accept that the Holy Land was not for him. To be free of the fear that had gripped all of their hearts since the word had spread that the Turks were coming to free the people of Antioch from their siege. 

They would be caught, he knew. They would be dashed to pieces between the walls and the mountains of Antioch. 

_No_ , he reminded himself. They would not be destroyed so easily; God was with them, and had been, and no matter how their numbers had depleted so far, He had not ended their journey. The leaders, the knights and lords who sat in their tents right by the walls, would think of a way in, or the Byzantine emperor would send relief forces as he had in Dorylaeum, or Caspian of Antioch would surrender as the supplies of the city too dwindled beyond comfort. 

But first they had to make it through this night, and the next, and the next.

Nicolò put his face between his arms, breathing a slow sigh. There had been a time when the flesh of his body and his breath had been enough to warm him. It was not so today. It was only facing the fire that had kept his nose from freezing, it felt, but he was so tired. There seemed to be not enough strength in his back and neck to keep his head up. He tightened his fingers around his cross, a wood thing that had been smoothed of its splinters by touch alone. It was too difficult to grip it well; he could only hold it loosely in his palm, fingers struggling to hold on. 

He closed his eyes. _God is with us_ , he repeated to himself, until the words lost meaning.

eighty-nine

In the year that those men who pillaged parties of holy pilgrims were given a name and status and a legitimacy he would have balked at even when alive—or so Nicolò hoped to be true of himself—they found themselves leaving Melilla on foot, after an attempt to board a ship there had resulted in a series of painful deaths for the both of them, for no fault of Yusuf’s own. 

Their deaths and healing had grown quicker and quicker, and both of their skill had grown as well; twenty years of practice with both his heavier swords and the lighter ones more common to Yusuf’s people had turned the both of them into warriors far more skilled than either had been when they met; and, further, they had none of the drawbacks of age that any other knight or warrior may have after years of experience. He and Yusuf simply did not grow, something they had not been sure of for years, until one day they realised that ten years had passed and the both of them looked much the same as they had on that fateful day. 

“We may never go home, then,” Yusuf had said, the morning of his birthday. They were in Mahdia then, which was surely no coincidence, but Yusuf had made no attempts to visit his family or alert them of his presence—or none that Nicolò knew of. But those were simply the words; they had both known from before then that they were as dead to their families now, two men who could not bleed nor die, nor tell anyone of it. 

But that had been then. This night was a good one, cool and brightly lit by the full moon, and the two of them were around a fire that crackled merrily, and their stomachs were pleasantly full. Yusuf was half-reclining, but his eyes were sharp and bright. “Do you know, Nicolò, what we call that there star?” he asked, pointing upwards so lazily that Nicolò could not say what star he had meant if he was an astronomer. 

“You ask as though you would agree with me even if I knew its name,” Nicolò said, because the naming of things had been a point of contention between them for a long time, before they realised that the words they used were one and the same. “And besides, you are the poet of us. Stars are your business.”

Yusuf hummed, and then began to speak in Arabi that was too quick and low for Nicolò to follow, beyond recognising the poetry in its sounds alone. “If not the stars, then what was _your_ business?” he asked then, sounding almost surprised that he did not know.

Nicolò cleared his throat. He had avoided speaking of it for a reason, but he did not wish to lie to Yusuf. “I do not know if you could call it a trade, but I was at a monastery.” As such, he had had no business of his own; his time had been spent learning to read and write and words of scripture.

Yusuf furrowed his brow. “A monastery?”

Nicolò nodded. “With time, I would have become a priest.” He could not even imagine it anymore, himself in cassock and smocks, beads around his neck, preaching of those things he no longer truly believed in. Once, he had taken great pains to imagine all of this, imagine his future stretching before him, years of this, before an ending that took him to his _true_ destination—a destination he would never reach, not as he was now.

Yusuf’s frown had not eased. “Was that the depth of your belief?” he asked, voice growing tighter with each word. “Was that why you became a _pilgrim_?”

Nicolò straightened at once. The fire that had seemed pleasantly warm moments ago seemed to burn when combined with Yusuf’s accusatory gaze. They had argued about this before; what Nicolò had been, what his people had done, why they had done it. The first time he attempted to explain that they had been pilgrims, Yusuf had laughed and spat and nearly raised his sword on him. Nicolò understood it now, in a way he had not been able to accept then—pilgrims did not, after all, carry swords and commit the atrocities as they had. In this year, the pilgrims of Yusuf’s people were being harassed on their own holy journey. 

Each piece of information about the new-formed Kingdom of Jerusalem seemed to tear away from that belief. The new kings were there for gain, for money and land. The knights were there for a chance to war and attain Paradise despite their bloodlust, for that was what the Church had said—but it would not be true, Nicolò swore to himself, it could not. The Byzantine had offered any aid they did so as to reclaim those lands they saw as their own, and the Papal dispensations that had followed the sack seemed to say that that had been their purpose as well. The peasantry were there for the promise of a land of plenty, for a salvation that would take them, if nowhere else, then away from the life that they had left behind. Sometimes, he thought of Colinus, and his dead daughters, and his contentment with the murder of men who had not been responsible. Perhaps all of them had travelled for bloodthirst or belief, but—none of them had held a reason in their heart that Nicolò could bring himself to defend.

Not even himself.

“No,” he said. “No. I was... I did not wish to become a priest, in truth.” Yusuf relaxed his shoulders a hairsbreadth, but said nothing, so Nicolò continued. “I am the third son of a third son of a knight. My grandfather had had some wealth, but none of that would ever have reached me, or been enough to begin a trade. I had no great skill at arms, not as my brother Domenico did. One of my uncles, an even younger brother of my father’s, had joined the church. I had no objection to it then, but I was young—I grew restless as I grew older. I suppose I had no purpose. 

“I left on a whim, because the people who spoke of it were convincing, and everything they promised seemed important in a way I had never known. Perhaps I wished for Jerusalem to become... purpose.” It never had. There had only been a single moment, the very first moment of its sight, that it had threatened to mean for him what was offered. It had not lasted, not past the end of the siege. He could not believe that the others had felt it. The sickness in him threatened to overflow, as it always did when he thought of this now. “But it did not. There were few days that I did not feel my faith to be too weak, my own weakness and lack that kept me suffering.” Each moment of belief that God was with them had turned only to ash in his mouth, as he suffered from the heat and the cold, and from starvation and from injury. By the end, it had been all he could do to keep from asking God why he suffered when he was on His path. The answer, he supposed now, was because he never had been. He would not say this to Yusuf, though; would not offer such paltry excuses.

“I cannot offer a better answer,” he finished, throat tight. “I believed their words; I see now that they were wrong. But it was no great belief in the cause that took me there.”

“You may be surprised to hear this,” Yusuf said, finally, minutes later, “but I did not much care to be a cloth merchant, either.”

He heard the reproach for what it was. “I do not know if it is possible to repent enough,” he said. “But it is all I can do. I do not wish for Paradise any more.”

Yusuf said, “You wish for pardon.” Nicolò closed his eyes, and swallowed down the ache for it, that part of him that hurt physically when he imagined this immortality of grief and guilt. A hundred deaths for each life lost there would not be enough. When he opened them again, Yusuf gave him an angry look—but then said, “I wished to be a poet.”

This olive branch, he accepted. “That you always have been, my friend.”

one hundred sixty-three

Andromache found him as he stumbled back to their rooms at night, one leg merely dragged behind him, not of any lasting injury, but of the memory of the splinters embedded into his skin. She glared at him as he arrived, apparently having been too tired to sleep herself. This was something he found he shared with her; though he did not know what thoughts kept one as old as Andromache of Scythia awake, it was exhaustion, not a state of awakeness, that prevented them from sleep.

“What happened?” she asked after a minute in her faulty Zeneise, as he slid down to sit besides her.

“There was a child who seemed to be in trouble. I took her home.” To the unhappiness of her would-be captors. 

Andromache shook her head. “You should have taken someone with you,” she said. It was one of her most oft-repeated phrases; that they should not be alone. Solitude, he knew, had almost killed Quỳnh, in the years before she first united with Andromache—this purely due to the elements. He could not begin to imagine it; he himself had only spent mere days alone. 

“I know,” he said. But—Andromache and Quỳnh had been sequestered away with their old friend, and Yusuf was unhappy with him. He had not imagined that he would meet any sort of danger—not that it mattered greatly that he _had_. “I am alright, Andromache. Thank you.”

She sighed, and shook her head again. “You are not, but you refuse to speak to us about it.” So she _had_ heard. Or perhaps—perhaps she simply knew. “Who do you wish to punish or protect by keeping yourself trapped there, Nicolò?”

He sighed heavily. “I do not wish to hurt him. I know that I have, that I do. But I do not see how—”

Andromache said, “He loves you. It is clear to any to see.”

It was. It was. Yusuf’s eyes spoke volumes in poetry that even his beautiful words could not express—though he was always free with his words. He had known from the day that Yusuf had smiled at him and told him he knew that Andromache and Quỳnh were coming to find them; he had known from the day he walked beside him in the overheating sands of the desert, knowing the both of them could never return to their homes, and felt neither heat nor suffering nor loneliness. Yusuf had said that Nicolò had kept him from being driven mad in those early days of their immortality, but Yusuf was the one who had convinced Nicolò that he was not being punished in the depths of Hell for every day in the last eighty-odd years.

And yet, it was just as true that he had never been capable of such hope. Of seeing Yusuf’s heart, which was clear in his eyes to see, for it could not—it could _not_ —be for him. He would only hurt his heart, and that was worse to him today than any other sin he may commit. 

“I know, I know,” he said, finally. “And I... I him. But I do not dese—”

“That is foolishness, Nicolò,” she snapped, and he shut his mouth under the weight of her gaze and surety of her statement. “You are wrong to expect from him the one thing he cannot give to you. He cannot forgive you _for_ you, brother. He cannot redeem you. He is only a man, not your _God_.” Andromache said these words as though they were little, petty things, this woman who predated their Savior. To her, they were. It always left him uncomfortable, for he could not remove from himself the seeds of faith, no matter what storms they weathered—but in just this moment—she was right. “It has been eighty years. You are not the man you were then. It is not the man you are now that has done these wrongs, not to him, and not to others. You can only look to the future.”

She said nothing as the tears emerged, leaving burning trails over his cheeks. He had thought about it, a thousand thousand times, what he might do if he had not died, if he had died and returned, if he could return to that day, that year, to the day he had left. But it was not his march that he would change—it was the city. Eighty years was a significant time; his skill, his immortality, would be enough to stop a significant number of men. But that could not be, not even for them. There was, always, only the future. “Is it enough?” he asked.

She said, “It has to be.”

When, hours later, he went to their room, he found Yusuf half-awake, lying on his side on their cots, which were side by side once again, as they hadn’t been the previous night. “Did I wake you?” he whispered, as he stripped the outermost layer of his clothing and lied down. Yusuf shook his head. “Are you angry with me?” he asked a moment later.

“Never for long, my friend,” Yusuf said.

He pressed his forehead to Yusuf’s back, where his neck met the width of his shoulders, just for a moment. The warm air shuddered around them.

one

Nicolò awoke to an eerie quiet all around him. It was dark, he knew even through his closed eyelids, and his first thought was that it was the day before; that the siege had not yet broken, that he had simply awoken in the night when all slept—but then awareness followed. The fetor of blood and excreta surrounded him, and he could feel the crusted drying blood on his skin where not hours ago a sword had pierced his flesh.

He opened his eyes. It was not so quiet after all. Flies hovered around, and the buzzing filled Nicolò’s ears now that he could see them. He waved a hand at the flies hovering over the blood on his own clothing, and rose to his feet unsteadily. The battleground beyond the walls of Jerusalem was no less than a sea of bodies; some with limbs cut off, some with great wounds in the chest or back, some with horror on their features. Some had been so bloodied that he could not tell pilgrim from infidel. All were dead. 

He had believed, when the sword pierced him, that he had met his end as well. It was a death he could accept; he had known, after all, from the days huddled in the mountains south of Constantinople, hiding from Turks whose arrows pierced faster than men could run, that there would certainly be no return. To die in the Holy Land and be taken to Paradise was as good a death as any that he would have found. And yet, here he stood. Perhaps the wound had not been so bad. Nicolò had not been seriously wounded in battle before, nothing beyond some cuts and bruises, even in the battle that had ensued when Antioch fell. 

The man who had run him through was not here. They had been very evenly matched; meeting each other blow for blow for what had felt like hours and seconds all at once, until Nicolò’s arms had hurt with the strain of holding his sword up, and his opponent was sweating from exertion. Nicolò had struck first, his sword piercing the lighter armour and pushing past flesh and bone—but he had been unable to extricate his sword in time to avoid the swipe the Saracen had made for him, piercing through armour to impale him. The man had been stronger; he had pulled the sword from his body, and blood had rushed forth, sending Nicolò to his knees. Perhaps he had run then.

Had the injury been smaller than he had imagined? He pressed a hand to his abdomen, feeling the thick crust of blood that had formed on his tunic, leaving it brittle and pulverising under his touch. Nothing. He pressed, and still—nothing. How could there be nothing? He felt under the tunic, and sure enough, the shirt stuck to the outer tunic with the same blood, but under there, there was simply a layer of rough skin on his belly. Had he not known he had been stabbed, he would have assumed it was but dried mud, so little did it hurt. 

_No wound_. It was not possible. And yet it Was.

He stared at the gates of Jerusalem, the home of Christ’s death and resurrection. He pressed a hand flat against his skin, and took a deep breath. Then, relieving one of the dead Saracens of a sword, he marched into the city.

one hundred sixty-five

They were in al-Iskandariya for a year before there was any hint of movement. Andromache had been unhappy about it at first—there were always those that needed aid, and tensions were high in city and countryside, be it Ægyptian land or Christian or Ifriqi—but had offered to stay regardless. But they did not need to. Nicolò had said as much when they discussed it, days later, when it became clear the peace negotiations were, at the very least, meant truly and not simply pretty convincing words. 

“I am not saying we must stay here. I only wish to—keep an eye on developments.”

Yusuf had asked, this time before their sisters, “Why?” Things had been different between them again, and Nicolò knew it, but he had never wanted his trust so desperately, a trust that went deeper than life. It was strange and wrong, feeling as though he had broken it—if unintentionally. 

“I would be lying if I said it was the city I truly cared for. I just do not want the same to repeat that was done before. Not to anyone.” Jerusalem would fall—or it would not. His concern was with the men and women within it, the casualties of a war beyond them. These were the people they helped—this was what they did. He looked from Yusuf to Andromache to Quỳnh, and said, “I understand if you do not wish to stay.”

Quỳnh was the first to respond. “Don’t be silly. You’re my brother.”

Then Andromache: “What she said.”

Yusuf said, eyes on him, “I would not want you to go alone.”

His affection, Yusuf could not withhold, even when he attempted it. And when Nicolò’s heart sped up in response to that affection, he allowed it its pace. It kept that pace for much of the year, as he did not turn away from Yusuf’s heated gaze when the cloth he bought for the four of them was tailored into what the men and women of al-Iskandariya wore now; as he did not redirect him to others’ company when Yusuf clearly wished to be with him; when he did not pretend he did not see what was clear to all.

In al-Qahirah, they stopped great brawls from breaking out between those who were happy and unhappy with Salah ad-Din’s decision. Near Al Kolzum, they interfered with caravans that intended, despite the tentative truce, to harass a train of pilgrims. In al-Aris, they stopped the burning of a dozen ships before they sailed. And then, men began to move past the city, with messages, and the tension rose along with the temperature, until they were all simply waiting, knowing that there was no possibility of this building to nothing. Salah ad-Din took the city and let the men leave unhindered but with a small tax—Nicolò had been unable to look any of them in the eye that day—and then they paid that tax for as many as they could afford... and some that they could not afford, because Quỳnh was a quick hand, and none of them cared for preserving the wealth of the wealthy. 

When the King of England’s announcement reached them, they were in Akka. Yusuf’s hand clamped in his when they heard of it, fear and anger and worry for his people intermingling with the wish to protect, but it was not anger at Nicolò, and he did not feel that it was. When those ships began to arrive, they sat in siege, watching for the changing winds while Andromache and Quỳnh ran reconnaissance and played interference around both camps. This siege too had already lasted months and years—but it was he and Yusuf huddling together for warmth, and it did not feel as long or cold as another one had a hundred years ago. Yusuf asked him about it, one freezing morning, when it looked as though the sea beyond the city must be frozen also. “You are very patient. Everything you said before led me to believe that you would hate this.”

“This time,” he said, after minutes, “I believe in what I do.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a kudos and comment if you got here and liked this! And please come visit me at [my tumblr](https://briennetarhs.tumblr.com/) because I'm falling headfirst into this fandom and ship and I would love anyone to talk to about it!!
> 
> Some more notes: I've tried to keep the names of places (and people)(and languages) as contextual as possible, which was achieved through intense googling, wikipedia jumping, staring at an upside down 11th century map IN ARABIC (before I realised there was an English version)(haha)(I guess it's good practice for my poor Arabic?), looking for firsthand documents, and more. That means the names kind of jump around between languages, because Nicky thinks of some in Arabic due to his travels with Joe, and some in whatever language he was first familiar with them in, but it should be clear enough what they're talking about. In case it isn't, [here are the references!](https://briennetarhs.tumblr.com/private/632379751607205888/tumblr_19zsZaYtsHnsgOEpu)


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